Archive for December 2017

The dormitory door creaked. Stocking feet pattered in the dark. Nightgown skirts whipped softly about small ankles. A pigtailed shadow crossed the moonlit window, clutched something heavy in both hands.

"Thilde?" said a whisper. A weighty something sunk onto the mattress.

Mathilde popped an eyelid. A snub-nosed girl with pigtails sat at the foot of her bed. She clutched a book, peered at Mathilde with excited, blue eyes.

"Maisie?" mumbled Mathilde, rubbed flyaway hair from her eyelids. She blinked, focused on the book. "Woah."

"Yeh," said Maisie. She grinned, hugged the book tight. "Just nicked it." The hefty tome thumped as she dropped it to the checkered bedspread.

"Quiet!" said Mathilde, scrabbling upright. She crossed her legs, considered the cover. It was a moldy, soft grey, embossed with swirling filigree of a veiny sort. Neither a title nor a date marked it. Mathilde went a bit pale. "We're gonna get in so much trouble."

"Nah," said Maisie, tossing her head. "I'll put it back before Professor Montle wakes. He's all drunk."

"Well, if you're sure," said Mathilde. She peered about the dormitory, at the half dozen rows of breathing, curtained beds. Not a stirring could be heard, save a girl snoring two beds over.

The girls met eyes, nodded. Maisie grinned, crooked teeth glittering in the moonlight. Carefully, she turned the thick tome on its side. A hinged, iron clasp covered the text block. Maisie produced a little key, turned it in the clasp's keyhole. There was a clunk, low and resonant in the still room. The clasp slid away.

The tome split in her small hands. It rustled, soft, like fingers drawn over dry skin. Maisie flipped a few pages, squinted in the low light. A scent of fur and cloying taxidermy floated from the old leaves. They were thick, leathery, crabbed with faded, brown script.

Maisie frowned, turned the book about. "Can't read it," she said. "It's too faded."

Mathilde touched a cold page, pressed her nose close. Tight lines of ghostly, tea-brown script floated in the parchment, too light to be deciphered. Faded forms of tables and formulae crouched in the margins, unreadable.

She flipped to the last page, found it empty. Blank, lightly marbled parchment shone in the pale light. The girl turned them backwards. Leaves rustled, crinkled, stopped.

"It's blank, from here," said Mathilde, pointing. Maisie craned her neck. Text, scratched in spidery lines, filled half the page. Only the last, a single word, could be discerned.

"'Don't,'" read Mathilde, whispering.

There was a moment of stillness. Nearby, another child shuffled, turned in her sleep. Maisie glanced about, spoke in a quaver. "Maybe I should put it back."

Mathilde scowled. "Come on, don't quit now. This was your idea." She leaned over, plucked a pen knife and a goose feather quill from the side table.

The knife flicked open, scraped the nib sharp. Maisie watched her friend set the blade's point against the pad of her left thumb. "Tilde," she whispered, gasped. A dark bead bloomed under the steel. Maisie shuffled back, nervously wrung one of her braids.

Mathilde put her quill to the welling wound. Dark liquid oozed through its transparent shaft. Pen meet parchment, pulled crimson lines over the leathery page. There was a thin scratching, like rough nails over bone. When the girl lifted her pen, a short phrase was left behind in squarish print.

My name is Mathilde.

The girls stared at those wet, gory words. They glittered on the parchment. Mathilde put her thumb in her mouth, sucked. With her right, she moved to turn the page. "Maybe it's dea-" Maisie whispered, gulped.

On the next page was a new line: Crabbed, cursive strokes, small and red as capillaries on an eyelid.

Hello, Mathilde. Do you know who I am?

Mathilde gazed at the words through frizzy hair. Slowly, she lifted the quill to her thumb, scooped a new bead of red from the cut. She bent, wrote.

You are Gauge of Blaodwash. The last warlock of Marmony Dale.

Maisie crept from the foot of the bed, watched raptly as her friend turned a page. New words had appeared.

What can the warlock of Marmony do for Mathilde?

Maisie spoke, blinked at the tome. "Maybe... No one will notice if we don't put it back?"

"We are not putting him back," said Mathilde, scraping her dripping thumb for ink. She scribbled another line.

My friend and I are students at a school. They don't teach us what we want to know.

Mathilde turned the page. Her eyes went wide. The next, once blank, was filled to the margins: Symbols and formulae, text and diagrams; all bright red, as if just penned. On the top margin, in large text, was one more line.

I will teach you what they will not.

The sorcerers of old are extinct. Ask anyone. No longer does a conjurer lurk in that high tower. No longer do crooked fingers stir cauldrons of gore and liquid spite. No longer do chimeras creep down from the hills, gobble children in their beds. The sorcerers are gone. Only in folkloric tales do they still appear.* In tales, and in libraries.

In the rare and cloistered stacks of academia lie curious tomes. They are thick, leathery things. Their covers are waxy and porous, girded with iron and locks. Their pages are veined, weirdly marbled. They smell of skin oil and preserved hide.

The best are eccentric, filled with histories that change with every reading. The worst are unreadable, filled with disgusting nonsense and rambling obscenity. Others are simply odd, filled with naught but tables and graphs without reference. All appear hand-written. All are writ in blood.

If a reader happens to scratch some script in their own blood, the tomes may write back. One must simply turn a page and see.

These tomes are all what remain of many a deceased magician. They are known as incunabula.** They are brains. Brains bound into books.

Incunabula

When a sorcerer dies, a peculiar ritual (known as absuturation) may be enacted upon their corpse. With care and gruesome precision, the cadaver is dissected, stripped for materials. The skin is flayed, flensed, layed out in sheets. The nerves are extracted, treated, wound like twine. The brain is cut from the skull, filleted, pressed into prepared sheets of vellum.

A skilled sorcerer may assemble these materials into a gory tome. This process resembles an occult surgery, rather than the binding of a book. Needles stitch grisly leaves with neuronal twine. Forceps stretch flesh to frock covers carved with charms. The resulting block of bound tissue must heal for a year and a day before gaining sentience.

The finished incunable is a marvelous thing; a dead mind restitched and made alive by sorcery. They are true books of magic.

Use and Collection

Incunabula are among the most prized artifacts of sorcery. They are archetypal books of magic, the means by which the old practitioners pass on their arts. Without these books, many secrets would be lost to time

A magician's library would be incomplete without at least one incunable. No simple text or lifeless grimoire can compare, hold quite such detail and expertise.

Interaction with such a book of magic is a ritual in itself. Messages must be written on the tome's pages*** in one's own blood. No other ink nor ichor may suffice.† If the tome is willing, a message will appear on the following page.

Incunabula feed on the blood which is provided them. A portion of the absuturation process incorporates ventricles and veins into the spine and gutters of the tome, forming an odd sort of circulatory system. The text which an incunable displays is formed by the action of veins and capillaries beneath the page.

Of course, not all incunabula may be willing to speak. Depending on the circumstance of their death, sorcerers may not at all wish to communicate (or even continue living.)†† Many practitioners of occult arts keep a standing will be absuturated after death.††† Other bindings are not so consensual. Many a sorcerer felled by combat or assassination has been spitefully transformed into a book.

Some modern scholars believe that sorcery, now largely banished, could only return to the world by the teachings of incunabula.‡ In an effort to prevent this, many incunabula have been chained up, hidden, in scholastic libraries and scholarly collections. Many hundreds of clever minds are left to rot on dusty shelves.‡‡ They are read rarely, if at all. When they are, it is with great care (for books can be highly persuasive.)

There exist some who would free these stifled tomes. Rogue magicians, disdainful of the closeted, conservative ways of the establishment, seek to crack the chained shelves. No knowledge, they say, should be forbidden, even that which is most dreadful.

Footnotes

*Of course, this isn't wholly correct. The sorcerers of old are dead. The modern ones are far more cunning.
**Oh, look. It's our namesake.
***Incunabula may populate pages with text on their own, as if displaying their thoughts. Many, thought, remain blank. Any old thoughts become faded and unreadable, until new blood is supplied.

† Älf blood, most especially, will not do. Such black ichor burns the pages of incunabula, leaves permanent scars.

††Notably, the consciousness of an incunable is merely a reanimated version of the real sorcerer. The original remains dead.

†††Indeed, rumors say that elder magisters at various academies wish to be absuturated after death. they search tirelessly for the required recipe, determined to leave a personal, literary legacy.

‡The difference between a magician and a sorcerer is primarily political and historical. Both, certainly, own at least one cauldron. Sorcerers are merely more apt to put bits of people in theirs. They are also more likely to wear leather.

‡‡Humanity has a longstanding issue with not destroying that which they fear. There is a seductive lure to owning forbidden things, of knowing where to find them. Few scholars, in any case, could stand to see a book burned.

A quartet of rough hands raised fists of wine. Dots of light swam in the cherry liquid, glittered in crystal bowls. "Cheers!" said four voices, thumped the table with as many fists.

"And a warm, fat Hallowtide to all of us," said the head of the table, a shaggy lass with white-streaked hair. There was a chorus of hear, hear, a burble of gulped wine.

Beside the lass, a mouse in leather reached for a hunk of nut bread. "I will certainly become fat if we come here any more often," he said, spitting crumbs. The others chortled, admired their surroundings.

The table resided within a sumptuous parlor, all velvet, gaslights, and paneled wood. Servers wavered about, ferried drinks to and fro. A sound of harpsichord thrummed nearby, nearly drowned out by the boisterous cutters.

"This is the beau monde, friends," said a weird creature beside Stoat. Naught but her lips and green, bloodshot eyes showed under layers of woven silk.

"Damn true, Lilé" said a swarthy man with a scarred nose. "One thousand pounds!" he declared, smiling. The table cheered, raised their cups again. "Bless Stoat for finding the catacomb job."

The lass with the odd hair bowed exaggeratedly. "Please, Gar," she said, showing crooked teeth. "The magistrate was infatuated with me. Would've payed us a hundred crowns just to sweep the stairs, if he thought I'd like it."

"Poor bugger," said the mouse, teeth working at a biscuit. "Would break his heart to hear you're queer."

"Yeah," grinned Stoat, pecked the silk-wrapped girl on her swaddled cheek. Lilé shoved her, grinned back.

The mouse twitched his ears. "If you two would pause your fondling, I believe I hear the cheese."

Eight eyes were drawn to a pair of approaching waiters in black ties. One carried a wriggling white sack. The other; a paper-covered stool and a short, wooden bat. The fellow with the sack approached Stoat. He bowed briefly, placed it on the stool which his coworker had set down. With quick hands, he lifted the corners of the cloth. A blue-spotted lump rolled out, wriggled atop the paper.

"Madame," said the waiter, indicating the lump. He kept it from wriggling off with a firm hand. "Very good," said Stoat, frowning as if impressed. The mouse rolled his red eyes at her.

The waiter nodded, took the bat from his colleague. He pursed his lips, sharply thumped the lump thrice. He paused momentarily, observed a wiggle, thumped it once more.

"Madame," he said again, bowing. Eight hands clapped softly, hungrily. The waiters gathered their stool and bat. They bowed again, departed.

Stoat looked to her friends, raised her glass again. "Le beau monde!"

Long have people dined on species of mold. Certain molds, known as curdles, naturally infest the udders of cows, fleeces, and other such quadrupeds. Ancient Litorans, cunning and hungry as they are, somehow learned the contents of such a hardened, wiggling udder to be delicious. Now, thousands, of years later, the culturing of curdles has become a practical art. Vats of milk are allowed to come alive. Then they are killed, becoming, deliciously, cheese.

The best cheeses come from Faindun and Geselchundt. They graze on bowls of the finest milk, are allowed to pasture freely in the dry caves and cellars in which they are raised.

A soft cheese is kept for only a short while before being sold, whereas a sharp, hard cheese is allowed to grow old and sedentary over a period of many months.

In the end, it is the hard cheeses which are easier to prepare for market. The young, soft ones are hard to catch, and are difficult to club to death. Clubbing* is the accepted method of ending a cheese's life on the pasture, and is thought to contribute to its texture.

In Empereaux, it is traditional to club the cheese immediately before preparation, to ensure absolute freshness. This is done before the dinner table, so that guests may be sure of their host's respect and good taste. The phrase "forgot to club the cheese" is used when describing an individual who has committed a very obvious faux pas upon entering conversation.

Many varieties of cheese exist, depend greatly on country and milk of origin.

Boquefort is a spotty, blue cheese. It is soft, allowed to hop about in monastery runs, where it is traditionally pastured by Emperoussin monks. There, it grows delicious and musty on a diet of fleece milk (and the occasional monk.)
Goat is made, as one might expect, from the milk of fat Emperoussin goats (they call it chevre.) Per the preference of the island people, it is a soft cheese, remaining very mobile up until serving. It is made fresh, kept in sacks for only a few days before eating. These sacks are hung from the ceilings of kitchens, may thump about during the night.
Zaleggio is kept by the hearty cheesemongers of Maples. It is a round, fat mass which smells highly of feet. It is washed every day by the cheesemongers, who slap it excitedly to promote good texture.
Mozzarella is a strechy, soft cheese fed on the milk of Alagórian buffalo. It is kept in vats of brine, fed a trickle of milk. When ready for serving, it is scooped up in great strings, rolled into fist sized balls, and smacked on a table until dead.
Cheddar is kept by the Firlish in dry caves. When young, cheddar is undesirable, but becomes flaky and delectable with age. It is pressed into wheels as it becomes old and immobile, eventually solidifying into an easily-bludgeoned wheel.

Author's Note

“A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk. ”
― James Joyce

*The culinary implement used to club a cheese is known as a cheese pin. It may also suffice as a serviceable cosh, in times of strife.

Mist caressed the moors. It stroked the bruise-black heather, set gentle dewdrops on countless twisted stems. It kissed the still faces of stagnant pools, concealed shallow, submerged skulls. It stroked every dip and dell, spilled wet fingers into the shadowed crevasses of glacial monoliths. It groped, invasive, into fast trenches dug by human hands.

"Shite's cold" said a man, hunching his ranger's cloak against the creeping mist. Icy dew dripped from the flat bill of his helm, touched his red nose. A dinged gunspring lay in his lap. He squatted in a dugout off the trench, pressed near a round, meager stove.

"Here, Seg" said another. He picked a steaming copper pot off the stove, proffered it with mittened hands.

"Blimey, Newcastle" said Seg, trying it. "D'you strain this through your socks?"

"It's the water, mate. Drained off something awful" said Newcastle.

Seg stared into the cloudy tea, grimaced, took another mouthful. Somewhere nearby, a bugle cut the dull air. Three, short notes. Seg peered out of the dugout, over the rough edge of the trench. Stalks of heather were silhouetted against the low, grey sky. He squinted, frowned.

"What d'you reckon that was?" said Seg.

"Dunno. Might be the patrol to Dun Derthe getting back."

Seg made a grim sort of grunt, put the tea down. "Don't envy those lads. Reports were a bloody nightmare."

Newcastle wiped a drop of snot with his woolen wrist, snorted. "Didn't read 'em. What was the matter?"

There was a short clank. Seg had opened the breach of his gunspring, was squinting at the mechanism. "The folk had quit burnin' their dead" he said, idly twisting the catch. "Tied 'em to stakes to keep the ragwretches out, like guard dogs." He squinted down the sights, adjusted them. "Stench was terrible. People were loosing their minds."

"Hey!"

A grey mouse had scurried into the dugout. A broken trail of mist swirled behind her. She peered out from under a deep hood, clutched a pistol gunspring in pink paws. "Hey! Get wary, lads. The patrol's back with company." She scampered off, cloak flapping.

Outside the trench, a ruckus had gone up. Shouts cut through the dead, wet air, lifted from neighboring fortifications. Boots thumped on oaken planks, slapped into mud. The distinct click and slither of priming gunsprings whispered all about.

To the East, not far off, another commotion was growing: A thundering of dirty, clawed feet; a high, massed cry of crooked voices; a terrible rhythm of drums stretched from human hides.

Newcastle's eye bugged. He lunged for his weapon. "In the daytime?" he said, ducking out of the dugout. Seg followed.

They emerged, heads just above the crawling mist. About them, hooded silhouettes rose, nestled weapons on lips of trenches. Seg did the same, tucked his elbows into the moist and mossy soil, cradled his weapon, steady.

Past the gunspring's sights, dark things shifted in the mist. A line of thin and crooked figures writhed over the backdrop of low hills, indistinct. Seg thumbed the primer. The weapon's springs went taught.

"Hold steady!" called a Sergeant, two trenches behind.

The shapes in the mist began to resolve, drew ever closer. Spindly horns showed over leering masks carved from wood and pelvises. Distinct, fell voices could be heard over the mass, calling for flesh and murder.

"Rangers, pick targets!" said the Sergeant. Seg squinted, slowed his breathing.

Beside Seg, Newcastle gasped, pointed. A shape broke from the mist, larger than the others. It loped on long, muscled thews wrapped in raw hides, waved a half sawmill blade above meter-long horns. Upon each of those spikes of bone was skewered an eyeless, skinned head.

"Well, slap me thrice and hand me to my mum" mumbled Seg. He pulled his aim to the monster.

"Free volley!" called the Sergeant.

There was a massed, overlapping crack of steel. Ballistic needles cut wavering lines through the murk. Seg's weapon snapped and whirred five times, emptied. Twisted figures jerked and fell mid-run, spun into the heather. The mill blade-waving fiend screamed, enraged, kept its pace.

"Ready arms!" said the Sergeant.

A slither of rustling blades filled the trenches. Seg dropped the gunspring, drew a stout and heavy sidesword.

"Good luck, mate" said Newcastle, elbowing his comrade.

"Same to you" said Seg, eyes locked on the giant wretch's matte pits of eyes. The thing bared its jagged rows of teeth, met his gaze. Seg bent at the knees, ready to spring.

"Charge!"

They did.

Powell's boots crunched with every step, crushed frozen stems and musty fungus-caps. She clutched a navy-blue ranger's cloak tight with red fingers. A scabbard poked neath the cloth, wobbled as she walked. Great puffs of breath floated behind her, dissipated over the stark and chilly moorland.

The ranger stopped, tilted her hooded head to survey the undulating, rocky plain. Great, low waves of mist rolled from the east, disappeared in the yellow burn of a low, Western sun. Not a structure could be seen, save for the carcass of an ancient tower on some faraway hill.

"Ah, stuff me" said Powell, dismay crinkling her frost-nipped face. "I'd give my left foot for a roof and a cuppa." She kicked at a mound of toadstools, kept walking.

Some time later, the sun had nearly set. Powell's boots were obscured by mist, made opaque by the light's low angle. A red moon was already visible, dull against bright clouds.

With a huff, the ranger knelt by a rare spinny of squat shrubs, began stripping one for kindling. Dry twigs crackled, snapped like popping fingers. Somewhere nearby, something else rustled.

Powell shot upright. "Who's there?" she said, spewing steam.

"Oi, pardon me" said the rustling, not far behind.

The ranger spun about, stared at a hunched, little figure bundled under a hood and heavy furs. It carried a stained bundle over one shoulder, looked down at the soil. "Didn't mean to startle you" it said, voice broken, weak: An old woman's.

"Oh" said Powell, slowly releasing her sword hilt.

"I'm Gretle. Live just over the hill, the old tower."

"Kirst Powell, of Charholm; Ward-scout, second class" said Powell.

"You look awful cold, Dear. Come and warm up, aye? Have a bit of tea" said Gretle.

Powell hesitated, looked at the ruin-topped hill. "Well, if you don't mind" she said, stifling shivers.

The old Gretle turned, gestured with a rabbit-fur mitt.

Powell followed to the ruins. A wrecked half-cylinder of stone rose from the hilltop, crumbled and eaten by lichen and mistletoe. A thin ribbon of smoke curled from a low, pile-stone hut built in its center. Gretle disappeared through it's knot-whorled door, called out.

"Leave your sword outside, Dear. It shan't fit."

Buckles clinked. Powell shivered as she lifted the covered longsword from neath her cloak. She set it beside the door, ducked inside.

"Mind your head" said the little, hunched woman. The hut was smoky, cluttered, hung with countless plants, skins, and ropes of herbs. A cluster of oozing candle butts, stuck to a low table, lit the place. "Sit" said Gretle, poking the embers of a clay fireplace.

"You're alone, here?" asked Powell, curling her legs at the table. She looked to a grey wolf's skin, pegged to the wall by its empty eyes. She sniffed, caught a mite of rendered flesh in the smoky air.

"Aye, I manage" said Gretle, setting down a clay mug. Powell noted her thick, stubby-nailed fingers, stained with green. "Are you a cunning-woman?" she asked, taking the mug. It smelled of mint and sage.

"Oh, no" said Gretle, rubbing her nose beneath her concealing hood. She sat opposite Powell, eyes glimmering in her shawl. "I've ways, but no real art."

She looked at Powell, tilted her head. "Never mind me. What's a Dear like you doing on the winter moors?"

"I'm a Ranger" said Powell, tugging the mantle of her cloak. A crest was embroidered there in dark thread; a fir cone set on a shield.

A wide smile gleamed under Gretle's shawl. "And Ranger girls wander the moors alone, with naught but a sword and a mouthful of curses?"

"No. I got lost. We were looking for trollholes, and a storm came up" said Powell. She held the tea, clutched the warmth. "Don't you know of the Ward Rangers?"

"Of course. 'Fast is the shield against night'" recited the old voice.

"So goes the motto" nodded the Ranger.

"Wise woodsfolk and soldiers, keeping trolls, and älves, and ragwretches at bay."

Powell grinned, wry. "Admittedly, I'm not such a wise one, yet. Got lost in a little flurry" she smiled, looked serious. "My thanks for bringing me in, Master Gretle. I wish I might repay you."

"Oh, but you might, yet" said Gretle, eyes gleaming, large, under the dirty shawl.

"Oh?"

"You said it yourself, dear. 'My left foot for a roof and a cuppa.'"

There was silence for a moment, save for the fire crackling behind Gretle. Powell's eyes bugged, fixed on the large, black-gummed teeth grinning in the dark shawl.

A log popped, split in the fire. Gretle leapt, short claws grasping. Her hood and shawl fell away, revealing the bat-ears and blunt, fat-nosed face of a young troll. The Ranger lashed out, kicked the table into the lunging fairy-creature.

Powell rose, scrambled from the trollhole. Claws grasped at her departing boot heels. She dashed out into the dark and the cold, whipped the sword from where it lay. The scabbard flew off, landed amidst the ruins.

From the hut charged Gretle, ears pulled back, black eyes reflecting red spots of moon. She circled the Ranger, hissed at the bared steel. She lunged, roaring, far faster than her stubby legs belied.

Steel flashed in the crimson moonlight. The troll's roar ceased, cut by a wet spatter and a hiss. With a scream, the creature bolted, trailing smoke, steam, and hideous curses.

Panting, Powell looked down: A wide ear lay on the heather, thawed the frozen sod with a trickle of smoking, black gore.

Northeast of Firlund, alongside the yawning sea, stretch a range of vast and otherworldly fens. Few civilized folk abide on these cold and evil plains, for they are awash with the mist of the Otherworld. They are the domain of all manor of fairy and monster. They are the Moors So Sere, and they are no home to Humanity.

If left alone, a slow and predatory wave would subsume the good realm of the Firls. Every hill would be a trollhole. Every mistletree a leering älf's perch. Every cradle a ragman's feed trough.

A hardy and singular force keeps the Other at bay: The Ward Rangers. They are the cunning step of the hunter; the burning iron bolt. They are Humanity's shield against night.

The Ward Rangers

Though the Crown has not been at war for two score years, it has supplied and fortified a bitter front for more than two centuries. This front is the effort of the Rangers, a defense against the encroaching Other.

Though the Rangers are a military organization, they are separate from Firlund's army. They are a specialized force, clad in signature mantled cloaks, learned in the ways of patrolling and guarding the moors.

Recruits are sourced from both the Firlish army and civilian population. Signing on is no small decision, as all known the risk which Rangers face on the edge of civilization. Many, when faced with dire straights, will consider a life as a paid Ranger only as a final resort.

Multiple layers of defenses are held across the moorland front. The first is the army's own Northern line of fortresses, wherein Rangers and soldiers station and operate together. These forts serve as supply and mustering grounds for further Ranger lines. The second line is a broad, many-league swathe of neutralized ground, upon which Ranger lodges are constructed. These lands are civil enough, and many good folk make their lives within them, guarded by frequent Ranger patrols. The final line, where the mist of the Other swirls unabated, resembles a literal front against the wilderness. Rangers keep trenches and fortifications here, play a slow and deadly tug of war with monstrous opponents.

Rangers hold ground against a sporadic and cunning enemy, one well at home in otherwise difficult terrain. The monsters they face are multifarious, wicked beings.

Ragwretches

All rangers know a single wretch to be deadly as any human combatant. In a group, the red-eyed beasts make a maniacal and voracious host.

On the moors, ragwretches grow to unusual size and strength. A plentiful diet of human flesh makes even the skinniest scrap of a wretch into a monster of village-devouring proportions. A blooded ragwretch is bigger, stronger; possessed of massive horns and an inappropriate number of teeth.

As the impressive heads of hordes, giant wretches lead offensives on Rangers lines, greater than any force outside of the Underworld.

Trolls

A troll is an intelligent creature. It may keep a homey hole, use weapons, wear clothes, and even speak human tongues. Trolls are not at all human, however. They care not a whit for human life, and will readily eat a Ranger, if given the upper hand.

Small trolls, known as trow, make attempts at crossing the moors into human lands. These cunning, hungry creatures make their holes in the moorland hills, probe the Ranger's lines. They are a subtle danger, but a real one, when driven by hunger.

Like all creatures of the Otherworld, trolls are allergic to iron. It burns their flesh terribly, serves as a handy deterrent.

The Mist

On some days, a pall of weird mist flows from the wilderlands to the North and East. It is the spoor of the unknown, a sign the Otherworld is pressing near.

Where the mist creeps, the enemy is strong. Rangers take this vapor as sign of a job yet to be done. Every meter of ground saturated with the stuff is a meter to be claimed and broken, to be owned by the world of humankind, rather than the Other.

Where the mist is banished, the Ward Rangers have won, claimed another victory for a world slowly encroached by a realm which would consume it.